Erica's first time teaching at the Mindtriggerz Training Lab 4.4.09

Today was my first day on the job and all I knew was that I was going to be teaching a bunch of wee-ones how to point and click.
Becky came and picked me up from my house and took me to the Cardinal Valley indoor shelter. When I get there, all 10 computers were set up. James was fixing something on one of the computers. Jerome was also there already taking care of a father and his son. Becky went to the back room to put the food down and Jerome took me to one of the computers and showed me what I would be teaching the kids.
Most of the kids are between the ages of 4 and 8, meaning they were learning simple things like typing and moving and clicking the mouse.
Around 10:30 I stopped learning and started teaching. For most of the kids it was their second or third time at the lab so a lot of them knew what to do already.
Around 1 everything basically cleared out. One other family came in. The little boy, Adwin, was very cute and extremely enthusiastic! It was his family's' 4th time coming, so they will now be getting their own Mindtriggerz computer at home.
Next week we will be delivering a total of 3 computers... I think.

-Peace

Erica <3>
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A tiny addendum by Jesse's mom
While Jerome, Erica and papa Weck were rocking the training lab, James and I did some work at Liverpool - rearranging, sorting, and running ghetto Ethernet cable to my back porch! James also plowed through about six donated machines in various states of disassemblage and got at least one working again and the others marked for either the cabbage patch or for needed supplies.
Jon appeared to running on fumes so he took it easy.
Next weekend will mark the 11th, 12th and 13th Mindtriggerz computers that have been installed in kids homes!
<3>

And Then There Was Silence/Darkness

MT Blog, Sat. Mar. 28, 2009

James here, reporting on the events of today's Mindtriggerz session. With the first day of Fayette County Public Schools Spring Break came a record-breaking day for numbers. More on that soon.

The morning started out with Jerome and I heading over to the lab and setting up. Andy let us in and we found him in there, front door open. Setup took most of the hour, and Becky arrived at probably a quarter till ten, quickly getting down to work disinfecting the keyboards and mice.

Literally, at the crack of ten- maybe even a couple minutes before, people started showing up. I retreated into the backroom to work on some stuff while Jerome and Joyce started to teach. Around eleven thirty, things started getting pretty hectic. Jerome headed out to drop off the first of the two computers while Joyce taught and I made sure the computers didn't completely fry. After Jerome's first run, things got even more hectic. The lab was truly at maximum load- imagine nine computers and put two people at each of them, and you had what it looked like for a while. For some reason several computers starting acting. It seemed that the more people there were in the room- not even how many people were using them, but just the volume of people has some kind of weird effect on the systems. Especially our KY Trade computer. Tux kept acting up. Maybe because the kids weren't typing fast enough :)

A little before one, it got drastically silent as everybody disappeared. Joyce and I sat in the lab, her playing the Car game and me watching, until Jerome got back. At that point, we shut down all except our Ghetto-tastic sector and started packing things away. An emergency came in and Jerome had to go fix a computer out at one of the houses. When he got back, having heroically solved the situation, we packed away the final set of computers, broke the rest of the way down and bugged out.

All in all, it was a highly productive day at the Cardinal Valley Lab, one that will go down in the projects books as a record day, with how many people we had there- first, second, third timers, plus two more computers going out.

Hopefully, we will have good luck and continue our highly productive weeks.

As usual, we'll be back next week, same time, same place, at the lab, doing business as always.

Peace.

<3

-James

The STEM Fair (yes, we could learn to love you)

We arrived at Bryan Station High School this morning for the STEM Fair among a throng of children and adults and amid a cold drizzle. Armed with a fully-operational Mindtriggerz computer, a few spare parts and several dozen penguin candies and cookies (thank you, Sarah) - we took our place at booth 329 conveniently located next to Dunbar's table.

It took Jon, James and the fashionably late Chris about 5 and 1/2 minutes to get the machines set up and running. It took me considerably longer to rearrange but once the cookie bags were opened a steady stream of young folks and not so young folks streamed in, stopped for awhile, lingered over the treats and learned about what we are doing and why. Par for the course, "Tux Type" (aka "Type Faster") was a BIG hit among the students. We actually placed a chair by the computer and had a variety of people jockeying for their turn at the game. At one point even Thomas from Dunbar had to take his turn - he stunned the onlookers with his mad typing skillz! Several of the kids were sent flying with a Mindtriggerz business card and directions on where to find Tux Type to download from online. YEAH, OPEN SOURCE!!!

I was concerned about being emotionally strong enough to handle talking to so many people about the Jesse Higginbotham Technology Trust but for whatever reason (I'd like to think it was somehow Jesse) I found the resources and with the help of the "guys" we had what I consider a very successful day. Many adults stood and talked and took information and lauded the work - I even had the chance to meet one of Jesse's day-care teachers. She told me how much she loved Jesse and what a great kid he'd been to teach and I am hopeful now that her 17 year old son who LOVES computers might come join us in our work.

We met a lot of great people who want to contribute and frankly, that is more than even I could have hoped would happen today. As the event began to wind down we had a visit from Superintendent Stu Silberman who asked that I send him the link for "Tux Type" - oh and yeah, he had a penguin cookie too! Thomas cornered the Channel 13 camera man and Jon gave a wonderful interview for Fayette County School's news channel. Sarah's dad even showed up and was given full license to eat as many cookies as he wanted (he only had one).

I'm sending lots of LUVZ right now to James, Jon, Chris and everyone who is and has been part of the Mindtriggerz team. TY, ty, ty.

Meanwhile, Jerome was hopping at the Park training lab - he had six families and a total of ten kids who spent the day learning about the computers and software. The lab was busy from the arrival of the first kids at 10am to the last family that left at 1:50pm. Thankfully, Joycie was there to help him the entire time. (Side note to Joyce - thank you for your patience!) One family today showed up with a copy of the flyer that Cardinal Valley Elementary distributed - it was a wonderful informational page printed on bright yellow paper in both English and Spanish. Thank you, CVE!

We are thankful to so many - to everyone who has helped in any way. From distributing flyers, to fixing machines, to donating old systems, to allowing us to have a booth at the STEM fair. To each and every person who in some way remembers Jesse by helping us do "good stuff" in his name.

<3
Jesse's mom

Curly Joe is on the move

There was a great deal of laughter today at Mindtriggerz- a few inside jokes between April and Jon and while James wasn't feeling so great, Sarah looked fabulous just home on Spring Break from Ball State. She brightened up the teaching lab with her beautiful red sun dress then came by Liverpool to enthusiastic applause.

Jerome said there were two new families - one from Community Action Council and another from Cardinal Valley Elementary. April and Joyce posted flyers in nearby apartments and we are still aiming to place the 40+ systems we have ready before we get back to working at the Dunbar garden.

I've been so focused on the STEM Fair that I am little or no help to anyone. James, Chris and Jon formulated plans for the day while I obsessed on making lists because I don't quite trust my memory. Our "booth" will be set up in the center of the action. Chris suggested we have something to draw some of the younger STLP members so it was decided we'd take a Mindtriggerz computer to break down and let them help us put it back together. Demonstrating what we do hardware wise is just as important as the open-source cookies and candies, right? Right.

We continue to recieve calls and emails regularly from folks wanting to donate their older systems and that is so very heartening to us. We made pickups this Friday all over Lexington and ended up with a variety of CPU's and accessories. We are thankful to all those who spread the word and those who remember the Mindtriggerz Project when they upgrade.

Jon has great plans for our future and we are excited not only for his continued involvement but his non-stop enthusiasm. He revitalizes our energy and renews our efforts. We are of course eternally grateful that Jesse has such an incredible "best friend."

An inside to Jon and April, "yes, we will learn to love you."

<3

Box 'o RAM

Sparse crew today at Mindtriggerz the Liverpool lab edition - it was a blustery, cold day and we don't blame anyone for not "getting out" in it. James helped Jesse's dad set up at the Valley Park training center and before the clock struck 10:00am a young man was there with his granddad for his second day of instruction! Four families came a few steps closer to getting their own Mindtriggerz computers and we are ever-grateful that Mrs. Weck sent Mr. Weck to "go help Jerome" today. When I stopped in to help break-down this afternoon there was our wonderful "Papa Weck" assisting a mom and daughter with the Pac-Man like spelling software.

But I am getting ahead of myself. At Liverpool, while James was busily designing our new "RAM b0x0rZ" I was reformatting floppies as fast as I could. Enjoying the thrill of the new drill bit, James designed this awesomely functional and absolutely gorgeous holder of spare RAM in our endless effort to keep things neat and tidy around the lab. There were some additional concerted efforts and we did manage to clean up a rather cluttered area of our work stations (and cabbage a very old system). When our newest Mindtriggerz Director showed, we inundated him with queries of "what is this" "what is that" and well, Jon arrived in the proverbial nick of time.

By the time James and I returned to the Park Shelter Joyce was already dissassembling the lab computers, she swore she'd been there the whole time and we just hadn't seen her. There is something about an aversion to keyboards or is it speakers? but as always, her presence is greatly (GREATLY) appreciated.

We have plans to distribute about 50 flyers next week to the apartment complexes in the Park vicinity. Jesse's dad wants very much to have the 40+ ready Mindtriggerz systems distributed before we commence work at the Dunbar Memorial Garden in a few weeks. I am hopeful we can - especially since we are quite literally running out of storage space at our houses.

We'll be showing our stuff at the Fayette County Public School's "Science Technology Engineering and Math" fair on March 14th - hopefully this too will draw attention to what we are doing as well as the how's and why's.

This is our work, we do it for each other and we do it for Jesse. Never forget you, desu.

<3

Failed monitors and latent power surges

As always, we were particularly glad to have Chris join us this Saturday. Sporting a new car and excellent school grades he helped James create our newest Mindtriggerz Instructional Video that can be viewed here:

After their adventures in film production, Chris and James proceeded to repair two additional computers - replacing non-working components and passing the machines off for Jesse's dad to load Ubuntu and the educational software suites.

While Jerome delivered two more computers to recipient families, it was discovered that the monitor I worked so hard to polish up (see our last post for sordid details!) decided it didn't like being clean and performed an epic fail just for its new family. We played a quick switch-up and are happy to report that Danisse now has a completely operable Mindtriggerz computer! (Later we learned there exists a bent pin that James is certain he can repair with a pair of pliers and some brute force)

Meanwhile at the Cardinal Valley Park Training Lab, the incredibly lovely and perfect Sarah showed up on break for the weekend from Ball State to help instruct kids and families. She was joined by the precocious and multi-talented April as well as our infamous hippie chic Joyce who all took a breather from computers to play some basketball with several of the children. Sarah's dad even stopped in for a bit and I think she may have let him play "Tux Type."

We'll be sending the Mindtriggerz Project information to a wider span these next few weeks releasing it to the Kindergarten students at Cardinal Valley Elementary. The aim is to place these 40 plus computers before the first of May so that ALL of us can resume work at the Dunbar Memorial Garden for the Spring and Summer.

Til next time, as James would say: "peace."

<3

And the cheese was without form

Due to the incredibly horrible weather this week we were unable to host any work on the Mindtriggerz Project. While many in the Lexington area went without electricity for several days (and some still are as of this post fumbling in the dark) I totally jinxed Liverpool by over-preparing the basement.

Jesse's dad stopped in before the ice fell too heavy and reminding him of our last bout with a big storm we took the time to move monitors and cpu's and anything else residing on the basement floor to higher planes. As sure as Tux has no bugs, the next day about 10am the power went out at the house. I called in reinforcements while lugging the generator from its hidden corner maneuvering around pallettes of technology. Jerome rolled in about an hour later with cans of gas and a good arm and managed to get the generator going before any water collected.

Unfortunately, he didn't get to his house fast enough but thanks to Jon most everything in the basement on Brittany was moved up as well.
For about six hours we were without electicity (a far cry from the last storm when we were seven days in the dark and cold) - again, I wonder at the brevity of the power loss and my being too ready for it. I had just fanagled an extension cord from the generator up the stairs and down the hallway so we'd have "internetz" and a lamp in my room for late night reading when VOILA, Kentucky Utilities kicked in.

I was thankful not to have a flooded basement.

Liverpool even now is a layer of slush - temps topped out in some balmy 50 degree-ish range today which surely helped - especially the sidewalks that were impassable yesterday. Most of our "families" walk to the Park for the training sessions so we knew there was little chance anyone could make the trek on Saturday.

An email came in this evening for another donated machine so hopefully the weather will cooperate and we can resume our regular activities next week. *Fingers crossed*

<3